These students make & drive Formula race cars all by themselves? 🤯 | BP2B: Student Edition! Ep.01

1. 0:00 – 0:17

   Introduction

   1. SPSpeaker0:00

      We're actually comparable to a Porsche 911 in terms of our acceleration time. Uh, but if you look at the modern electric cars, like Teslas and, uh, Cybertrucks and stuff, they can do much faster than this. The driver should get out of the car within five seconds from a fully harnessed position.

   2. VIVidhi0:15

      Hi, guys. Welcome to The Best

2. 0:17 – 1:15

   Welcome to the Best Place to Build: Student Edition

   1. VIVidhi0:17

      Place To Build: Student Edition. I'm Vidhi, a fifth-year student in IIT Madras. Today, we're at the Center for Innovation, CFI, with the Raftar Student Formula racing team. Today, they're about to test their car, so let's go find out more. [upbeat music] I'm here with Aditya, the team captain. He's a fourth-year student from electrical engineering. So Aditya, what's happening here in the background right now as we stand?

   2. SPSpeaker1:01

      Uh, so we tested the car yesterday. All the tasks that have been found out yesterday, all the issues with the car, the team members tried to fix it by 9:00 PM, so that post, uh, all the daily meetings, we can complete all the tasks and check if the car is running, and then aim

3. 1:15 – 3:33

   Introducing Team Raftar, IIT Madras

   1. SPSpeaker1:15

      for a rollout at 12:00 AM. That's what we're doing right now.

   2. VIVidhi1:18

      And typically, how long do you guys spend working on the car every day? And is it different during testing periods?

   3. SPSpeaker1:23

      Uh-

   4. VIVidhi1:23

      Does it get more hectic?

   5. SPSpeaker1:24

      So yeah, obviously. Uh, I mean, during testing periods, it's just that, uh, you have to spend an extra three hours after 12:00 AM because you're running the car. Otherwise, on a week night, it's usually... uh, we have daily meetings at 9:00 PM, and then the team, uh, team members just work on whatever task they're allotted, and they typically go back around 1:00 AM, 12:00 AM, around that time.

   6. VIVidhi1:44

      Sounds a little rough, but [chuckles] yeah, everyone seems to be driven-

   7. SPSpeaker1:47

      I mean, it's their passion, so.

   8. VIVidhi1:49

      When I think of, like, a race car team, the first question that pops in my head, and I think in a lot of people's heads, is, like, what's the top speed?

   9. SPSpeaker1:55

      Okay.

   10. VIVidhi1:55

       What's the fastest that the car can go?

   11. SPSpeaker1:57

       It's designed to reach a top speed of 154 kilometers per hour.

   12. VIVidhi2:00

       Wow.

   13. SPSpeaker2:01

       But on track, we've only hit around 90 to 100. Uh, the track has a maximum straight line of only 75 meters, so it's more about the acceleration. So our zero to 100 acceleration time is under four seconds on this car. We're actually comparable to a Porsche 911 in terms of our acceleration time. Uh, but if you look at the modern electric cars, like Teslas and, uh, Cybertrucks and stuff, they can do much faster than this.

   14. VIVidhi2:25

       And you mentioned going electric, so was this a recent change for you guys, or since when have you been switching?

   15. SPSpeaker2:29

       Um, so this team started off in 2012 as a combustion team. In 2020, after the lockdown, uh, we noticed that, okay, the world's shifting now, and we decided that now is the time, let's shift to electric.

   16. VIVidhi2:40

       Mm.

   17. SPSpeaker2:41

       So our seniors from those times, they took big decisions. They, they purchased a motor, they selected a motor controller, which we're still using four years down the line. And, uh, yeah, that was the birth of our electric team. So in 2023, we rolled out our first electric car and finished third in Formula Bharat. And since then, we have gone on to compete at Formula Student Germany, and winning two consecutive engineering design awards at Formula Bharat. And this car is our latest, uh, version, the RFR 26, which we hope to take to Formula Bharat and win the competition, and then take it to Formula Student Germany as well.

   18. VIVidhi3:14

       So Formula Bharat happens in January, right?

   19. SPSpeaker3:16

       Yes.

   20. VIVidhi3:16

       And you guys have started testing already, this early in the year.

   21. SPSpeaker3:18

       Yes, so this time we've actually got the car ready very early, and we hope to do a lot of testing and a lot of tuning, and it's gonna be a lot of fun for the next four months for everyone involved. Because it's the first time we have had an opportunity to really-

   22. VIVidhi3:32

       Yeah

4. 3:33 – 5:20

   Testing for Formula racing competitions

   1. SPSpeaker3:33

      ... act as a motorsports team. Till now, we have just been trying to run the car.

   2. VIVidhi3:37

      Mm.

   3. SPSpeaker3:37

      Now, it's to run the car and optimize every single part on the car.

   4. VIVidhi3:41

      Like, you were mentioning about the competition, so do they have both your IC engines and electric vehicles, both of them parallelly, or did you have to switch competitions-

   5. SPSpeaker3:48

      Um

   6. VIVidhi3:48

      ... to meet your car change?

   7. SPSpeaker3:49

      So, uh, Formula Bharat has the combustion category and electric category as a separate event. Uh, so what's happened now is in the European versions, in Formula Student Germany, Netherlands, et cetera, what's happened is, they have completely removed the combustion category, and now it's only electric and driverless. So driverless is the next thing, which everyone's moving towards.

   8. VIVidhi4:07

      Wow, are you guys moving towards driverless as well?

   9. SPSpeaker4:10

      Yes, that's actually what we're doing right now. So with this car, we've effectively maxed out an electric powertrain, what- whatever you can do, with a single motor, of course. So for driverless, what we're doing right now is, we're building a scaled mo- model of the car. So it's this car, shrink it one-thirds, and-

   10. VIVidhi4:26

       Okay

   11. SPSpeaker4:27

       ... then what we aim to do on that is effectively test everything, our perception, our SLAM, our mapping, our path planning, et cetera. Everything is gonna be tested on that, and then we hope that will be an easy scale-up to the main car in the future. So the development of the scale car was a very, like, garage-built kind of project. So we just took, like, old frame tubes and just welded them together and just took the... took webcams, and we borrowed things from other teams, whatever they could get, and we just made it. And then now we can do, like, a pre-planned path, and we're planning to do a full autonomous run in the next couple of months, so.

   12. VIVidhi4:59

       So this is for Formula Student Germany that you mentioned, the driverless car?

   13. SPSpeaker5:02

       Uh, yeah, driverless is right now only in Formula Student Germany, because unfortunately, no team in India has gone driverless yet. So we're hoping to be-

   14. VIVidhi5:08

       That's very exciting for you guys, to be the first then.

   15. SPSpeaker5:09

       We're hoping to be the first ones to roll up to Formula Bharat with a driverless car, so that's one of our big ambitions for 2027.

   16. VIVidhi5:16

       Wow, um, that sounds very exciting. And right now, what kind of roadblocks

5. 5:20 – 6:45

   Team Raftar’s driverless ambition

   1. VIVidhi5:20

      are you facing?

   2. SPSpeaker5:21

      Now, we have built a simple foundation, which has all the basic control loops and everything to run the car. But now what we want to do is, we want to do controls, like proper controls, like launch control, regenerative braking, all that. So for that, you need to test a lot of models, and you need to have a running car, a completely reliable car, so that you can change the code, test, change the code, test. You can do that multiple times, so that you can optimize everything and make sure... So one thing that we're doing right now is trying to do launch control. With the new battery pack we've built, the problem, actually, is that our tires might not have enough grip to-... sustain the power that comes from the battery pack. So we have to develop our own launch control algorithms to control the torque in the initial phases, so that we can optimize our acceleration time. And we're trying to also look at better ways, like we're trying to develop a fuzzy logic-based controller, and we're trying to use sliding mode control as well. So there are a lot of research and papers online, and we're trying to implement some of that and then add some of our own team's thoughts into it.

   3. VIVidhi6:19

      Yeah, I really like the spirit [chuckles] that you guys have and how planned it is this time-

   4. SPSpeaker6:22

      [chuckles]

   5. VIVidhi6:22

      -and the time period that you guys have. And it sounds like a lot of work, so how many people do you have on the team-

   6. SPSpeaker6:28

      Um

   7. VIVidhi6:28

      -on deck?

   8. SPSpeaker6:29

      So we have around 45 people in the team. So second years are the juniors of the team. Uh, they help with all the tasks like manufacturing, procurement, and they're in a learning phase, where they learn about every single part of the car, so that when they get to the third year, the third year's job is to design the car. So they're

6. 6:45 – 7:54

   The people behind the best student formula team

   1. SPSpeaker6:45

      the design crew. Uh, so their job will be to design every single part of the car, integrate it, and then handle testing, all that. And the fourth years, which is us-

   2. VIVidhi6:54

      Yeah

   3. SPSpeaker6:54

      ... we are the core team. So we help with financials, we help with management, and, like, we make sure that all subsystems are aligned with respect to their goals and the team goals and the vision of the team-

   4. VIVidhi7:04

      Right

   5. SPSpeaker7:05

      ... and stuff like that.

   6. VIVidhi7:06

      As a core team, I can imagine that decision making is one of the things that you break your heads over a lot. [chuckles]

   7. SPSpeaker7:10

      Yes.

   8. VIVidhi7:10

      And I've had a slight experience of my own in an intern. So I was designing this wearable.

   9. SPSpeaker7:14

      Okay.

   10. VIVidhi7:14

       And there we had a trade-off between battery life and the form factor. Like, I could go for-

   11. SPSpeaker7:19

       Okay

   12. VIVidhi7:19

       ... a bulky battery-

   13. SPSpeaker7:20

       Okay

   14. VIVidhi7:20

       ... but then that weighs down the wearable. And such decisions can often be very confusing, but what helped me that time was to have a guiding principle. Like, this is the vision-

   15. SPSpeaker7:29

       Right

   16. VIVidhi7:29

       ... for the product.

   17. SPSpeaker7:30

       Exactly.

   18. VIVidhi7:30

       So what is the vision for Raftar in this case?

   19. SPSpeaker7:33

       So the vision-

   20. VIVidhi7:34

       What is the guiding principle?

   21. SPSpeaker7:35

       So the guiding principles are, okay, you have a race car. What makes a race car faster?

   22. VIVidhi7:40

       Mm.

   23. SPSpeaker7:40

       Number one is weight, strength of parts. These are two things. And the third thing, especially if you have an electric car, is reliability.

   24. VIVidhi7:47

       Right.

   25. SPSpeaker7:47

       These three things are the guiding principles. Once you've achieved these three, then you can do whatever you want. You can go crazy.

   26. VIVidhi7:52

       Mm-hmm.

   27. SPSpeaker7:53

       Like, every single

7. 7:54 – 10:10

   Team Raftar’s guiding principles

   1. SPSpeaker7:54

      part on the car is designed with a weight target in mind.

   2. VIVidhi7:57

      Okay.

   3. SPSpeaker7:57

      So we had the battery pack last year. That was the first generation battery pack. That was 75 kilos. This year, once we went to co- different competitions, we learned a lot from teams. We came back and saw that the average weight of a foreign team's battery pack was around 45 kilos. So we have gone ahead and developed a 40 kilo battery pack this year.

   4. VIVidhi8:13

      You mentioned, uh, going to the competitions, giving you the exposure and helping you realize. So what else do you learn from these competitions, apart from the great part, that, yes, you get to go abroad with the team-

   5. SPSpeaker8:22

      Yeah

   6. VIVidhi8:22

      ... and it's a great experience, but how collaborative are they? Are they open to sharing? How does it-

   7. SPSpeaker8:27

      Oh, definitely. You could just go over to any team and talk to them, and they would be very open about showing you their design and showing you that what made their design so good. And then you basically take tidbits from all these teams, and then you have like a mental picture of what makes a good battery pack. And in terms of our team especially, it was also very good talking to them about some of our other future projects, like going towards hub motors, going towards how to integrate controls-

   8. VIVidhi8:51

      Right

   9. SPSpeaker8:51

      ... how to make sure that all the systems are synchronized, all that. So it was very good talking, and those teams will be very open. We have had meetings with some of the top teams, like AMZ and Monash Motorsport, so we've maintained friendly relations with them even after the competition.

   10. VIVidhi9:05

       Well, that's great to know that. It's not like some... I know the pressure-

   11. SPSpeaker9:09

       No

   12. VIVidhi9:09

       ... would be really high there, but instead it's been-

   13. SPSpeaker9:10

       No, I mean, you should see the campsite.

   14. VIVidhi9:11

       [chuckles]

   15. SPSpeaker9:11

       Like, it's all, all of them partying, all of us are partying together after every day.

   16. VIVidhi9:15

       Okay, wow.

   17. SPSpeaker9:15

       It's just about sharing, sharing a drink, sharing a, sharing thoughts.

   18. VIVidhi9:17

       I have heard other horror stories [chuckles] about how much pressure there is to get the car done and all of that.

   19. SPSpeaker9:21

       I mean, obviously there's pressure-

   20. VIVidhi9:23

       Yeah

   21. SPSpeaker9:23

       ... but then it's also, it's also fun, right? Because you are participate- you're representing your country, you're representing-

   22. VIVidhi9:29

       Right

   23. SPSpeaker9:29

       ... your college abroad, and then you're working on something that you love. So it's ... The pressure is just something that's on the side. And it's a- amazing because you have a lot of the people at those universities are actually alums from here-

   24. VIVidhi9:41

       Wow!

   25. SPSpeaker9:41

       ... or other, other Indian colleges, who then go there-

   26. VIVidhi9:44

       Right

   27. SPSpeaker9:44

       ... and then they share information back to us, and then we improve it. [chuckles] So it's like a nice feedback loop going on there.

   28. VIVidhi9:51

       Wow.

   29. SPSpeaker9:52

       Yeah.

   30. VIVidhi9:52

       I think now is a good time for us to, like, just, if you could walk us through the car.
8. 10:10 – 20:30

   Raftar car tour

   1. SPSpeaker10:10

      two types of motion. One is pitch, which is the car moving up and down, and the other one is roll, where one tire lifts up and the other tire is not lifting. So what this does is, it decouples both the motions. Imagine you're going on a straight line-

   2. VIVidhi10:23

      Mm-hmm

   3. SPSpeaker10:23

      ... and then you have to take a turn.

   4. VIVidhi10:24

      Right.

   5. SPSpeaker10:24

      So, you, before taking the turn, you'll brake and then turn. So one thing is when you brake, your car will pitch forward. So all your aerodynamic components will all pitch forward, and that can cause the flow to separate on the aerodynamic part, which is very bad. You lose- the driver will suddenly lose a lot of grip. So you can tune the pitch spring to be very, very hard and the roll spring to be very, very soft, so that your loads don't transfer ... Your loads transfer easily in corners-

   6. VIVidhi10:47

      Oh, okay

   7. SPSpeaker10:48

      ... you can continue. So that way, it helps. And this is actually a patented design, so we're the only team in India which has a decoupled suspension. So this is our dashboard. So this part is basically where all the driver controls are there, and there's a small controller behind this. It sends basically all the front sensor signals to the rear of the car.

   8. VIVidhi11:06

      So how much information does the driver get at once? Because he has to make really quick decisions.

   9. SPSpeaker11:10

      Yeah, so-

   10. VIVidhi11:10

       So I guess you'd be giving just the essentials to him.

   11. SPSpeaker11:13

       Yeah, so basically it's a, there's a screen here.

   12. VIVidhi11:15

       Yeah.

   13. SPSpeaker11:15

       So that gives speed information, battery voltage, and all the... It's tuned to, for different drivers, we have different things. Because each, each one wants their own thing, right?

   14. VIVidhi11:23

       Right, okay.

   15. SPSpeaker11:23

       Some people want speed to be, like, shown, so that they know how fast they're going, and they can show off to the next driver that, "Oh, I went 75, bro. You went only 60." Something like that. So that is one thing. And it also shows critical failure, so any time the car shuts down-

   16. VIVidhi11:37

       Mm

   17. SPSpeaker11:37

       ... the driver will immediately know what part of the car shutted down. Like, was it the battery system? Was it the motor controller? Et cetera. So one thing, yeah, we're, we're standing in front of the tire, so might as well talk about it. So for vehicle dynamics, for race cars, for motorsports, this is the most important, the tire. It connects your car to the ground. In around 2016, 2017, we used to buy tires from, uh, other companies, import them. They were very expensive. So what did we think? We went to MRF, which is right here in Chennai. We told them that, "We'll give you data from those tires-... and you reverse engineer that, and then make a tire custom for us. And this was born. This is the MRF ZTD 1, which is now sold to Formula Student teams all over India, and it was built because of Raftar. So-

   18. VIVidhi12:19

       That's really amazing.

   19. SPSpeaker12:20

       Yeah.

   20. VIVidhi12:20

       Like, really good collab of, like, research-

   21. SPSpeaker12:22

       Yeah

   22. VIVidhi12:22

       ... and engineering-

   23. SPSpeaker12:22

       Exactly

   24. VIVidhi12:22

       ... that's benefiting so many more people-

   25. SPSpeaker12:24

       Exactly, yeah

   26. VIVidhi12:24

       ... and outside the team.

   27. SPSpeaker12:25

       I can show you some components from the car here. So this is our car's steering wheel. This steering wheel, uh, was built with carbon fiber, so it's, like, 25 layers of thick carbon fiber, because the driver can, you know, apply a lot of forces on it. So this is the quick release of the steering wheel. So whenever the driver has to get out of the car quickly, uh, he just presses this, and the steering wheel unlocks from the rest of the car.

   28. VIVidhi12:45

       Could I try it once-

   29. SPSpeaker12:46

       Yeah, sure.

   30. VIVidhi12:46

       If you don't mind?
9. 20:30 – 23:35

   Interview with the racer behind the steering wheel

   1. SPSpeaker20:30

      Hi.

   2. VIVidhi20:30

      So all set for the car?

   3. SPSpeaker20:31

      Yeah, yeah.

   4. VIVidhi20:32

      How-

   5. SPSpeaker20:32

      So we're just getting ready. Yeah.

   6. VIVidhi20:34

      Yeah. So how long have you been driving for?

   7. SPSpeaker20:36

      Um, so I started driving in my second year, and so it's been one and a half years now, yeah.

   8. VIVidhi20:42

      Wow, and how was your first experience when you sat in the car and you were about to drive?

   9. SPSpeaker20:47

      Oh, it was crazy. Um, I guess it was a little bit scary because I didn't-

   10. VIVidhi20:51

       Makes sense

   11. SPSpeaker20:51

       ... want to risk crashing it, but at the same time, like, the amount of power you feel when you slam the axle, it's crazy, yeah.

   12. VIVidhi20:57

       You weren't scared for yourself?

   13. SPSpeaker20:58

       No, no, I kind of trust-

   14. VIVidhi20:59

       Like sitting in an entirely student-made car? [chuckles]

   15. SPSpeaker21:01

       [chuckles] I mean, I kind of trust the team, thankfully.

   16. VIVidhi21:04

       [chuckles]

   17. SPSpeaker21:04

       I was more scared about crashing it, so I didn't trust myself as much. But it was good, yeah.

   18. VIVidhi21:08

       And did you have any training before you, like, got onto the car-

   19. SPSpeaker21:11

       Um-

   20. VIVidhi21:11

       ... for getting a feel for this sort of thing?

   21. SPSpeaker21:13

       Right. So, uh, we do go-karting sessions, uh, because it roughly mimics what the rear-wheel drive will look like. And so we do a few sessions, have selections for that, and that's how, like, drivers come out.

   22. VIVidhi21:25

       Competitive go-karting- [chuckles]

   23. SPSpeaker21:26

       [chuckles]

   24. VIVidhi21:26

       ... for driving. Sounds really fun.

   25. SPSpeaker21:28

       And the goal is just don't crash.

   26. VIVidhi21:29

       [chuckles]

   27. SPSpeaker21:30

       Yeah.

   28. VIVidhi21:30

       Damn, that's great. And how is it for you driving now? Like, are you a lot more comfortable, or is it because the car changes every year so much that it's always something new for you?

   29. SPSpeaker21:39

       Yeah, so it's always something new. Every year, we make a completely new frame. So, uh, this is actually just my second time driving this car, so getting a feel of the axle, the steering, all of that takes a bit of a time. So we'll just do a few shakedowns. Over time, we'll go on, uh, higher speeds. Yeah.

   30. VIVidhi21:56

       Whoa. So right now, what speeds would you be touching, roughly?

Episode duration: 24:31